The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man by Mark Hodder

After taking the plunge into Mark Hodder's wonderfully realised alternate history steampunk world with The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack I was eager to see what else he could do with the concept in The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man.

Readers are reunited with the explorer Sir Richard Burton and his assistant the poet Algernon Swinburne. They're every bit, maybe even more Holmes and Watson, as they were in the first book. Another character that pops into this one, which reinforces the connection with the famous detective and his assistant, is the father of Conan Doyle, it also explains where the author's fascination with fairies came from.

You don't have to have read The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack to enjoy The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man, but it definitely helps. Hodder doesn't do a lot of exposition and not being aware of what was set in place in the first book may leave a reader a bit all at sea early.

The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man is less self contained than The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack. There are more madcap steampunk inventions and alterations of flora and fauna. The melding of the two (giant insect bodies forming enormous structures rather like trams or busses) was interesting and amusing.

The world is fleshed out more and readers get an idea of just how much the meddling of the time travelling scientist Edward Oxford (see The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack) has affected the world. Personally I think there are hints that if was different well before Oxford got involved, but he certainly changed it further and not necessarily for the better.

It's not exactly a cliffhanger ending, but it does definitely make you want to read on for The Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon, which is the third and final book in the trilogy and will somehow tie it all together.

I like the way Hodder has taken two footnote events in history: Spring Heeled Jack and the Tichborne Affair (at the heart of The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man) and woven them throughout his stories and made them remarkably plausible by using actual events and people in a familiar yet skewed setting.

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack is a fantastic mix of steampunk, alternate history, detective novel and science fiction.

The real genius in the book lay in pairing the explorer Sir Richard Burton with the masochistic poet Algernon Swinburne. It’s this unlikely duo and their somewhat exaggerated portrayal in the book that really makes it work and sets it apart from many others of the same type. As soon as I heard Burton was a major character I was probably sold on The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack. Richard Burton was one of my favourite characters from Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld series and interested me enough to read one of the biographies (The Devil Drives). The opportunity to see him featuring in another story was not to be missed. I think the obvious literary parallel to make here is that Burton is Sherlock Holmes and Swinburne is Dr Watson. That was the feel I got from the duo.

Author Mark Hodder has made full use of his steampunk setting and the alternate Victorian England he has created for the novel. Along with steam powered hansom cabs and single person gyrocopters there are genetically altered parrots, dogs and in one case an orang-utan. Burton and Swinburne aren’t the only real life Victorian figures to play a part in proceedings. The also features the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, nurse Florence Nightingale, naturalist Charles Darwin and playwright Oscar Wilde. I also liked the portrayal of British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, because it tallied in many ways with the way George MacDonald Fraser wrote the same character in his Flashman novels.

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack while trying to explain the origin of the supernatural phenomenon referenced in the title, is also a glorious romp through a wondrous and very different Victorian England to the one we know. The character of Algernon Swinburne as he is in the book was a real breath of fresh air, he could go down as one of my favourite sidekicks. The slight poet provides many of the book’s most comedic moments, particularly his antagonistic relationship with the basset hound Fidget.        

I was delighted to get to the end of the book and find that not only did it not spell the end for the decidedly odd couple of Burton and Swinburne, but that there are at least two more books (The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man and Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon) featuring them. Although many of the changes within British society and the technological advances are explained by history taking a curious turn I don’t think it covered everything, and I hope that this will be looked into further with the upcoming books in the series. Highly recommended and well worth reading, a superior entry into the ever expanding steampunk sub genre.